Week 6 fantasy football: Getting back the student state of mind

Week 6 will be dedicated to two quarterbacks who have seemingly silenced their early-season critics with some dominant comeback performances.

After spending the entire summer away from school, most college students can't wait to get back to campus. By early August, they are finally getting fed up with their unpaid internship in New York City that requires them to wake up at 7:30 a.m. every weekday to catch the train into Penn Station and have realized the only actual happy hours of their lives are the ones they spend sleeping. (Disclaimer: welcome to the real world! Also meet coffee. Coffee good.)

With anticipation building up all summer, the frat parties, bar scene and late night escapades with friends spearhead your revitalized social life after getting back to school. Classes? What are those? Syllabus week? Hah, more like 'get to party every night' week. Homework? Yea, I'll just do it the night before it's due.

With this mindset, it's more likely than not that you received below-average marks on your first couple assignments of the semester. But instead of getting down on yourself, you used it as motivation to finally turn the switch on in your brain and actually take your classes seriously (which would involve opening your textbook...or in some cases, finally going to buy it).

In the first five weeks of the season, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers both initially failed to live up to their regular season buildup.

In Week 3, Aaron Rodgers and the Packers' offense laid a complete egg against the Detroit Lions. It was the Packers' worst offensive output of the season as Rodgers (16/27 passing, 162 yards, one touchdown, 47.7 quarterback rating), failed to lead his team on a scoring drive in the second half.

In Week 4, Tom Brady and the Patriots got embarrassed on Monday Night Football in Kansas City. In the 41-14 blowout loss, Brady (14/23 passing, 159 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, 11.8 QBR) was pulled from the game in the second half and replaced by rookie backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.

But the good news for Rodgers and Brady was, like those initially slacking college students, they too, were capable of flipping on the switch and silencing their critics in the process.

Since his Week 3 outing, Aaron Rodgers is 34/45 passing with 458 yards, seven touchdowns and a 96.2 QBR. In ESPN leagues with standard scoring, Rodgers has a combined 46 fantasy points in his last two games after totaling 46 over his first three.

In Brady's one game since his Week 4 outing in Kansas City, he torched a then-undefeated Cincinnati Bengals team (3-0) on Sunday Night Football for 292 yards, two touchdowns and a 88.7 QBR (all season-highs) in a blowout Patriots win. His 20 fantasy points were also a high on the season and more than his output in Weeks 3 and 4 combined (17).

Fantasy owners may have been impatient early in the season with these two, but keep this in mind: both Rodgers and Brady are Super Bowl MVPs and have 565 combined touchdown passes in their careers.

So while you begin to ease back into study mode, sit back and relax, as it's finally time to give these two future Hall of Famers the benefit of the doubt in 2014. Because when you've successfully played quarterback in the NFL for as long as Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady have, you're naturally due for a bad game. But as long as you finish with an A in the class, all your early semester duds (or foolish nights spent hugging the toilet), will be willingly forgotten.

Bryan Rubin is a senior at Syracuse University. He once ate Chipotle three times in one day and woke up up at 3:46 a.m. on a Wednesday morning to make a roster move to his fantasy football team (while his friends were sleeping) to avoid wasting his No. 1 waiver claim. Follow him on Twitter: @bryan_rubin